Social Media Influencers- A Review of Operations Management Literature

This literature review provides a comprehensive survey of research on Social Media Influencers (SMIs) across the fields of SMIs in marketing, seeding strategies, influence maximization and applications of SMIs in society. Specifically, we focus on examining the methods employed by researchers to reach their conclusions. Through our analysis, we identify opportunities for future research that align with emerging areas and unexplored territories related to theory, context, and methodology. This approach offers a fresh perspective on existing research, paving the way for more effective and impactful studies in the future. Additionally, gaining a deeper understanding of the underlying principles and methodologies of these concepts enables more informed decision-making when implementing these strategie

A k-hop Collaborate Game Model: Extended to Community Budgets and Adaptive Non-Submodularity

Revenue maximization (RM) is one of the most important problems on online social networks (OSNs), which attempts to find a small subset of users in OSNs that makes the expected revenue maximized. It has been researched intensively before. However, most of exsiting literatures were based on non-adaptive seeding strategy and on simple information diffusion model, such as IC/LT-model. It considered the single influenced user as a measurement unit to quantify the revenue. Until Collaborate Game model appeared, it considered activity as a basic object to compute the revenue. An activity initiated by a user can only influence those users whose distance are within k-hop from the initiator. Based on that, we adopt adaptive seed strategy and formulate the Revenue Maximization under the Size Budget (RMSB) problem. If taking into account the product's promotion, we extend RMSB to the Revenue Maximization under the Community Budget (RMCB) problem, where the influence can be distributed over the whole network. The objective function of RMSB and RMCB is adatpive monotone and not adaptive submodular, but in some special cases, it is adaptive submodular. We study the RMSB and RMCB problem under both the speical submodular cases and general non-submodular cases, and propose RMSBSolver and RMCBSolver to solve them with strong theoretical guarantees, respectively. Especially, we give a data-dependent approximation ratio for RMSB problem under the general non-submodular cases. Finally, we evaluate our proposed algorithms by conducting experiments on real datasets, and show the effectiveness and accuracy of our solutions

The Ethical Standpoint of Social Influencers on Hotel EServicescape: A Theoretical Perspective on the Existing Literature.

Social media influencers create social media content and disseminate this to the customers. Currently before taking any purchase decisions, most of the consumers use e-servicescape platforms to find hotels review, ratings and pictures about the hotel service and product. At this stage consumers can get influenced by a group referred to as ‘Influencers’. Most of the time influencers can easily persuade their audiences’ judgment with their content. These contents can be unethically structured to gain benefits and they ultimately deceive the audiences. This article presents an inclusive review of different articles that were published in 49 research journals, internet columns, conference and book reviews

Supporting meaningful social networks

Recent years have seen exponential growth of social network sites (SNSs) such as Friendster, MySpace and Facebook. SNSs flatten the real-world social network by making personal information and social structure visible to users outside the ego-centric networks. They provide a new basis of trust and credibility upon the Internet and Web infrastructure for users to communicate and share information. For the vast majority of social networks, it takes only a few clicks to befriend other members. People’s dynamic ever-changing real-world connections are translated to static links which, once formed, are permanent – thus entailing zero maintenance. The existence of static links as public exhibition of private connections causes the problem of friendship inflation, which refers to the online practice that users will usually acquire much more “friends” on SNSs than they can actually maintain in the real world. There is mounting evidence both in social science and statistical analysis to support the idea that there has been an inflated number of digital friendship connections on most SNSs. The theory of friendship inflation is also evidenced by our nearly 3-year observation on Facebook users in the University of Southampton. Friendship inflation can devalue the social graph and eventually lead to the decline of a social network site. From Sixdegrees.com to Facebook.com, there have been rise and fall of many social networks. We argue that friendship inflation is one of the main forces driving this move. Despite the gravity of the issue, there is surprisingly little academic research carried out to address the problems. The thesis proposes a novel algorithm, called ActiveLink, to identify meaningful online social connections. The innovation of the algorithm lies in the combination of preferential attachment and assortativity. The algorithm can identify long-range connections which may not be captured by simple reciprocity algorithms. We have tested the key ideas of the algorithms on the data set of 22,553 Facebook users in the network of University of Southampton. To better support the development of SNSs, we discuss an SNS model called RealSpace, a social network architecture based on active links. The system introduces three other algorithms: social connectivity, proximity index and community structure detection. Finally, we look at the problems relating to improving the network model and social network systems

Brand Response to Consumer Backlash in Social Media: A Typology

The use of social media by consumers to admonish firms for their conduct has become increasingly common. Such backlash can take many forms and often occurs rapidly, spreads widely and is highly visible. The potential damage to brands can be severe if these situations are not dealt with effectively. To date, the issue has been examined relatively superficially in a range of disciplines without specific regard to the management of consumer-brand relationships in online environments. Our research examines the nature of company reactions to social media backlash and conceptualises a typology that categorises reputational damage and effective response. We present four typical reactionary scenarios and conclude that insufficient research exists in this domain proportionate to the level of consumer-brand social media discourse to the peril of practitioners operating via these channel

Beyond Duality: The Paradox of the Eco-Influencer

New, more resistant conceptions of 'influencer' have appeared in the field in recent years. Beyond influence that promotes excessive materialism, 'eco-influencers' encourage their followers to adopt eco-friendly waste practices, shop sustainably and resist consumption altogether. These influencers adopt many of the normative procedures of the field such as partaking in paid partnerships with brands and documenting ‘unboxing’ rituals, albeit with a green flair. This conception reveals a paradoxical, ideological tension as eco-influencers are both, at once, attempting to resist the marketplace whilst receiving a stake within it. This thesis is concerned with the paradoxical and ‘technocultural’ aspects of the eco- influencer’s practices. Eco-influence is situated within highly performative, algorithmic environments where surveillance is becoming increasingly ‘liquid’ and ubiquitous. In spite of constraints, eco-influencers harness technological tools to seek marketplace change and attempt to change the marketplace for environmental reasons. Recent research has brought attention to eco-influence, yet this thesis is the first to address this context qualitatively and anchored into a Consumer Culture Theory perspective. To address this knowledge gap, this research addresses the following questions: How do eco- influencers build and maintain legitimacy in paradoxical fields? And How does an eco- influencer’s use of digital technology affect marketplace logics? This thesis develops answers to these questions making use of institutional theory and its relevant concepts including: institutional legitimacy, institutional logics, and institutional entrepreneurship. To collect data, I conducted a netnographic study which included 17 semi-structured interviews with eco-influencers. The findings reveal that eco-influencers maintain and balance their legitimacy by leveraging plural, paradoxical logics in ways which are complimentary and counterbalancing. To demonstrate this dialectic relationship, the Taoist perspective of Yin- Yang and its relevant notions of duality are used to establish a novel way to understand paradox. Further, the finding of ‘The Surveillance Paradox’ and my subsequent theorising of ‘The Digital Discipline Model’ demonstrate how algorithmic and surveillance logics can pressurise eco-influencers into becoming their idealised self

'Beauty Vlogging: Practices, Labours, Inequality'

This thesis investigates the practices and labours of beauty vloggers (video bloggers) and the inequality sustained by these labours and practices. Beauty vloggers regularly produce videos on themes including hair, beauty, fashion and relationships for their own stable, selfcontained, branded YouTube channels. The literature on beauty vlogging has examined the presentations of individual vloggers. In this thesis, I problematise the conception of beauty vlogging as a solo endeavour, situating beauty vloggers in a wider vlogging industry, in the specific geographic context of the UK. Through the lens of feminist political economy, I ask how the organisational (macro) structures, in addition to (micro) frictional interactions between industry stakeholders co-produce beauty vloggers’ symbolic content. Analysis is informed by a wider three-year ethnographic study of British ‘A List’ vloggers on YouTube, conducted between 2015-2018, drawing from the “messy web” of research sites (Postill & Pink, 2012: 125). Ethnography thus encompasses digital, and offline elements, that make up the complexity and embodied nature of long term analysis of spaces contingent to platforms. I also conducted semi-structured interviews with beauty vloggers and stakeholders. Through ‘zooming out’ from analysis of the independent beauty vlogger this thesis considers how YouTube’s multisided markets, algorithms and their interpretations, the subjective decisions of talent management organisations, relationships with advertisers, authenticity discourses and alignment with existing creative industries and intermediaries all shaped the content that becomes visible on YouTube. iii Very few women are able to create a sustainable career through YouTube production, although YouTube is increasingly promoted as a pathway to creative employment. In this thesis I counter YouTube’s self-definition as an ‘open platform’. I argue that organisational structures and interactions between stakeholders assign visibility and reify existing lines of societal inequalities, in addition to rewarding the production of commercial and feminised content in the vlogging industry